This Is the Closest You'll Get to Seeing David Bowie Perform Live

David Bowie's commitment to not performing live ever again continues unabated. But that doesn't mean his music isn't played live; he just has a television and Broadway star perform it for him.

Michael C. Hall—that's Dexter from Dexter—is starring in Lazarus, an Off-Broadway show now being staged at the New York Theatre Workshop. He and the cast of the show appeared last night on TheLate Show with Stephen Colbert to sing Bowie's new single, also called "Lazarus", from Bowie's forthcoming album Blackstar.

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Bowie has yet to utter a word to the press since he emerged from music hibernation with The Next Day in 2013. Instead, he's let Hall, Lazarus director Ivo van Hove, and Blackstar producer and longtime collaborator Tony Visconti do the talking.

"What's really great has been the amount of secrecy surrounding what we're doing and what David's up to, not for any reason other than the unique experience in this day and age of people not having any preconceived ideas of what to expect," says Hall. "I think I'd be barking up the wrong tree if I were trying to figure it all out or pin it all down, because it's ambiguous and, like Bowie's music, someone could walk away with a very warm feeling and another with a very chilly one. They have signs in the lobby that say 'Gunshots will be simulated in this performance' and 'Strobe lights will be used.' I feel like Lazarus is like Bowie's best music, and the signs should just say "surrender and let it happen"."

"Lazarus is, of course, the story of someone who comes alive again," director of the moment van Hove, who is also behind the current Broadway smash A View From The Bridge, explains. "That was David's idea. But the great thing about David Bowie's work is that it is not one thing. And he always goes for the artistic choices. So you can take away different things from it and feel different things. That's what is great about his music, and especially this new music."

"Lazarus" is the best track from Blackstar, which features Bowie's collaboration with a group of young West Village jazz musicians led by saxophonist Donny McCaslin. It will be released on January 8, which just so happens to be Bowie's 69th birthday.

Fans got their first taste of Bowie's latest incarnation with the November 19 release of the ten-minute title track and its grand, confounding video.

"Making a new album with David Bowie is always a journey into strange territories," Visconti says. Blackstar, he explains, started out as demos featuring some of Bowie's old touring band, but took a left turn after last year's collaboration with the Maria Schneider Orchestra on "Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)" led him to McCaslin and Co. "We had a wonderful time making up a new kind of genre," Visconti says. "We didn't abandon rock entirely, but we welcomed the very specific talents and sensibilities of Donny's band, balancing what they do and what we do."

Visconti is circumspect about the rumored prospect of a live performance of the album: "Bowie does what he wants to do. Touring is a bit too retro to get to the public today. It is very expensive and exhausting. Making more videos and perhaps a show televised in selected theaters with surround sound might be the way to go. What has he done, 10,000 live shows? Why would he want to do more of the same?"

If Blackstar is any indication, Bowie would rather challenge his audience and follow his muse than take the obvious course.